The Ancient World - Prehistoric

Prehistoric Clothing

The first known humans to make clothing, Neanderthal man, survived from
about 200,000
B.C.E.
to about 30,000
B.C.E.
During this time the earth's temperature rose and fell
dramatically, creating a series of ice ages throughout the northern areas
of Europe and Asia where Neanderthal man lived. With their compact,
muscular bodies that conserved body heat, Neanderthals were well adapted
to the cold climate of their day. But it was their large brain that served
them best. Neanderthal man learned to make crude but effective tools from
stone. Tools such as spears and axes made Neanderthals strong hunters, and
they hunted the hairy mammoths, bears, deer, musk oxen, and other mammals
that shared their environment. At some point, Neanderthals learned how to
use the thick, furry hides from these animals to keep themselves warm and
dry. With this discovery, clothing was born.

Evidence of the very first clothing is mostly indirect. Archeologists
(scientists who study the fossil and material remnants of past life)
discovered chipped rock scrapers that they believe were used to scrape
meat from animal hides. These date to about 100,000
B.C.E.
Archeologists believe that these early humans cut the hides into shapes
they liked, making holes for the head and perhaps the arms, and draped the
furs over their bodies. Soon their methods likely grew more sophisticated.
They may have used thin strips of hide to tie the furs about themselves,
perhaps in the way that belts are used today.

Cro-Magnon man, considered the next stage in human development, emerged
around forty thousand years ago and made advances in the clothing of the
Neanderthals. The smarter Cro-Magnon people learned how to make fire and
cook food, and they developed finer, more efficient tools. Sharp awls, or
pointed tools, were used to punch small holes in animal skins, which were
laced

together with hide string. In this way they probably developed the
earliest coverings for the body, legs, head, and feet. It is thought that
the first assembled piece of clothing was the tunic. A tunic is made from
two pieces of rectangular animal hide bound together on one short side
with a hole left for the head. This rough garment was placed over the head
and the stitched length lay on the shoulders, with the remainder hanging
down. The arms stuck through the open sides, and the garment was either
closed with a belt or additional ties were placed at the sides to hold the
garment on the body. This tunic was the ancestor of the shirt.

One of the most important Cro-Magnon inventions was the needle. Needles
were made out of slivers of animal bone; they were sharpened to a point at
one end and had an eye at the other end. With a needle, Cro-Magnon man
could sew carefully cut pieces of fur into better fitting garments.
Evidence suggests that Cro-Magnon people developed close-fitting pants and
shirts that would protect them from the cold, as well as shawls, hoods,
and long boots. Because they had not learned how to tan hides to soften
them, the animal skin would have been stiff at first, but with repeated
wearings it would become very soft and comfortable. Jacquetta Hawkes,
author of
The Atlas of Early Man,
believes that Cro-Magnon clothes approached those of modern Eskimos in
their excellence of construction.

Much of what is known about early clothing is a patchwork of very little
evidence and good guesses. Only fragments of very early clothing have
survived, so archeologists have relied on cave drawings, carved figures,
and such things as the imprint of stitched-together skins in a fossilized
mud floor to develop their picture of early clothing. The discovery of the
remains of a man who died 5,300 years ago in the mountains of Austria,
near the border with Italy, helped confirm much of what these
archeologists had discovered. The body of this male hunter had been
preserved in ice for over five thousand years, and many fragments of his
clothing had survived.

Archeologists pieced together his garments, and they found that the
iceman, as he became known, wore a complex outfit. Carefully sewn leggings
covered his lower legs, and a thin leather loincloth was wrapped around
his genitals and buttocks. Over his body the man wore a long-sleeved fur
coat that extended nearly to his knees. The coat was sewn from many pieces
of fur, with the fur on the outside. It was likely held close by some form
of belt. On his feet the man wore animal hide short boots, stitched
together with hide and stuffed with grass, probably to keep his feet warm
in the snow. On his head the man wore a simple cap of thick fur. Though
the iceman discovered in Austria appeared much later than the earliest
Cro-Magnon man, the way his clothing was made confirmed the basic
techniques and materials of early clothing. The ravages of time have
destroyed most direct evidence of the clothing of early man, however.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Corbishley, Mike.
What Do We Know about Prehistoric People?
New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1994.

Fowler, Brenda.
Iceman: Uncovering the Life and Times of a Prehistoric Man Found in an
Alpine Glacier.
New York: Random House, 2000.

Goode, Ruth.
People of the Ice Age.
New York: Crowell-Collier Press, 1973.

Hawkes, Jacquetta.
The Atlas of Early Man.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976.

Lambert, David, and the Diagram Group.
The Field Guide to Early Man.
New York: Facts on File, 1987.

User Contributions:

Fire and cooking were probably around for about a 750 thousand to 1 million years before anatomically modern humans (cromagnons), starting with Homo Erectus, a form of man that pre-dated Neanderthals considerably. Neanderthals had fire and even used fire in conjunction with natural resins to make a highly effective glue, which they probably used to manufacture tools. Some scientists believe their clothing was more sophisticated than the kind of simplistic drapery portrayed on most TV documentaries, since they would have required better fitting, tailored clothing to survive in harsh ice age climates. However, it's true that only the more modern humans had bone needles that seem appropriate for sewing very sophisticated garments. There's a big debate about how intelligent Neanderthals were. They seem to have focused more on very practical survival items and less on the high art and culture that anatomically modern humans eventually developed. But there's some evidence (controversial too) that they had decorative items, like shell jewelry, feathers and body paint of some kind. Their material culture was probably more sophisticated than we have formerly recognized, but not as impressive and diverse as modern humans. However, recent genetic tests show that the majority of modern humans from outside of equatorial Africa have some Neanderthal DNA, which suggests, perhaps, that they were closer to us than we originally thought, despite some differences.

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